42 * ***** "Oh, Ranger!" 



they to the actions of the grizzly. However, as soon as Mr. Grizzly 

 leaves the bowl the other bears come down from the tree tops in a 

 hurry, to take his place at the feast. 



A bear up a tree never fails to excite 

 ; the curiosity of the Dudes and the Sage- 

 'brushers. They form a circle around the 

 tree, with cameras pointed upward, and 

 hundreds of films are exposed for a pic 

 ture which, unfortunately, is seldom a 

 success. The bear is generally too high 

 for good pictures or he is shaded by the 

 foliage of the tree, and the most the pic 

 ture will show is a shapeless black spot 

 which must be pointed out and explained. 

 "That's the bear I shot in Yellow 

 stone," they'll tell you later, proudly dis 

 playing a picture. "See that black spot? Well, that's the bear." 



The bear cubs are often elected to the task of climbing the trees to 

 shake down nuts and fruit to the mother bear. After she has eaten all 

 summer, the old bear begins to fatten and she is careful about climbing 

 trees for fear the limbs will break. Then is when she makes the cubs do 

 the work. In Yosemite especially have the mother bears worked this out 

 to a fine science. Some of the early settlers in Yosemite planted apple 

 trees about the valley, long before it became a national park. Every 

 autumn the cubs are sent up these apple trees to knock fruit down to the 

 mothers. Whenever a cub falls down on the job or returns to the 

 ground to eat some apples himself, he is cuffed and sent crying back to 

 the tree top. Not until the parent is fully satiated with apples can the 

 cubs take their turn at eating. 



Dudes are always asking about the private life of the father bears. 

 Are they faithful husbands? Are they good providers? Do they do the 

 spanking of the cubs, as in the case of humans ? And so forth. 



We dislike to expose the weaknesses of the national park bears, but 

 candor forces us to admit that the father bears are not much account 

 as such. As for their family life, it just isn't. The males hibernate in 

 separate apartments, or dens, all winter long. They are not present when 

 the young are born. They don't even send flowers. The little cubs prob 

 ably never know who is their father, unless perchance the mother bear 

 should meet him and introduce him to his offspring sometime during 

 that first summer. The mother bear takes the cubs to her den during 

 their first winter in hibernation. But once the winter is over she is tired 

 of them, and she chases them away to forage for themselves as soon as 

 spring comes. After that the cubs are not on speaking terms with 



